Rupert was so surprised that the peas fell off his knife. “Uh, what? I, er, no. No, I haven’t.”

Rupert looked across the oaken dining room table at Betty, then at their host. “I, um, that is. Ms. Lidalot and I came here to discuss possibly merging our company and your father’s. Not to, um.” He forked a chunk of turkey into his mouth.

Rupert laughed. “Oh. So there’s no, um, no rubber…”

“Why, yes, of course there’s my rubber room,” Clarence boomed. “Would you like to see it?”

Sarah brightened. “Daddy does piercings, too.” She looked between Rupert and Betty. “He taught me how to do my own. Do you have any?”

Rupert shivered. “Ouch! Certainly not.”

“Rupert,” Betty warned. “Mind your manners.”

Clarence frowned at Sarah. “Let’s not discuss your latest-”

“Would you like to see my booby pin?”

“Bzwxtlfump,” Rupert said as his peas fell off his knife again. “Is that-did you…That’s sick!”

“It has a ruby in the middle and goes through both-”

Mrs. Falla Clegg laughed loudly enough to drown out Sarah. “Well, there aren’t many piercings kids can do that would shock anyone any more.”

Clarence pushed himself away from the table. “We won’t be let alone in peace so we might as well do the tour of the chamber now. Then we can get to business.” He led Betty and Rupert down into the basement and to a door labeled ‘Torture Chamber.’ After some fumbling with a large ring of keys, he opened three different locks with a crash and slowly eased the door open. “I assume you are already familiar with the standard toys. You know. Blindfolds, handcuffs, whips, clamps, electrodes.”

“Do you keep horses?” Betty asked. “Look at all those riding crops.” She looked at the roaring fire with hot coals.

“Oh, no, that’s for my special friends,” Clarence said.

“That’s psycho!” said Rupert as he looked around the rubber-walled room.

“Normal?” asked Betty. “As far as I understand, they are clearly linked to mental disorders and psychopathology.”

“Again, not true,” said Clarence. “As a matter of fact, researchers in the Netherlands clearly demonstrated that we BDSMers are no more or less prone to mental disorders than control groups of boring normal people. [1] We even scored better in several categories including wellbeing and awareness.” He led the way back upstairs, where Sarah and Falla waited with cups of lavender crème brulee.

“It is the policy of Cappuccino Pharmaceuticals not to pry into people’s personal lives,” Rupert said with a shaken stutter. “I have never met anyone so, um, so open about such an unusual hobby. What kinds of people, um, er, partake in your, um, festivities.”

Rupert grabbed a napkin and prevented his dessert from escaping across the table. “What?”

“Oh, bother,” said Falla. “I’m not businesspeople, and this is now medical rather than religion.” She faced Betty. “Someone named Kathleen Taylor from Oxford said that someday we might treat fundamentalism of any religion as a curable disease.” [2]

“All those people who are so rabidly against gay marriage and stuff?” Sarah asked.

Falla smiled sweetly. “Yes, dear, just so. Someday the tables may turn and they will gay away the pray.”

Rupert brightened. “We are in the business of developing therapeutics, you know,” he said. “We can come up with a nebulizer and… Wait for it…”